


Take It Easy

by Silenceintheroom (OasisSunset)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fix-It, In the writing fanfic stage of the five stages of grief, M/M, Tenderness, it's about the yearning, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27680881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OasisSunset/pseuds/Silenceintheroom
Summary: Dean’s not sure how long he stands there on the bridge, trying half-heartedly for casual, but he feels it when the air shifts behind him. The part of him that had been afraid that Bobby was wrong, that Cas wasn’t really here after all, finally loosens its teeth from around his heart as Dean turns.“Cas,” he breathes, and Cas is right there, right in his personal space just like always, just like he should be, and the sheer relief of looking up into those familiar, blue eyes is enough to set Dean’s whole body trembling.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	Take It Easy

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Eagles song, ofc

Dean braces his hands on the bridge’s railing before him, surveys the hills and valleys sloping away into the distance. It’s beautiful, but he’s not here for the view. He had driven without quite knowing the destination, just chasing the pull in his chest until it crashed like a wave and resolved into something sure. Now there’s only one thing left to do, so he leans against the bridge and waits, keeps faith in the one thing that he has always believed in.

He’s not sure how long he stands there, trying half-heartedly for casual, but he feels it when the air shifts behind him. The part of him that had been afraid that Bobby was wrong, that Cas wasn’t really here after all, finally loosens its teeth from around his heart as Dean turns.

“Cas,” he breathes, and Cas is right there, right in his personal space just like always, just like he should be, and the sheer joy of looking up into those familiar, blue eyes is enough to set Dean’s whole body trembling. Since he’s been here, he hasn’t felt things quite as intensely as he had on Earth, but this, this is the same. He reaches out tentatively, half afraid that Cas will step away from him and half afraid that his hand will pass right through him, that this is just a heaven-induced hallucination. But his fingers brush Cas’s cheek, and when Dean flattens his hand there, Cas feels solid and sure. Dean’s breath leaves him in a rush as Cas tips his head into Dean’s palm easy as can be, lets his eyes drift shut. Looks more peaceful than Dean can ever remember seeing him.

They stay like that for a moment, Dean’s world narrowing down to just this, just Cas, while in the back of his mind he wonders how many years on Earth have passed them by, how many stars have formed and collapsed while they stay balanced here. When Cas slits his eyes back open, he turns his head until his lips brush Dean’s palm, presses the words into Dean’s skin soft as a secret. “I missed you.” Soft and deep and earnest, the same way he had told Dean he loved him a lifetime ago.

Dean’s fingers clench momentarily at the memory, and he slides his hand down until he can nudge Cas’s chin up, find his eyes. His heart is roaring in his chest with all the force of a hurricane, but Dean speaks through it, thinks, _This is Cas. It’s Cas. _He says weakly, “Cas, I thought I lost you, man.”__

____

__

Cas gives him a half-smile. “I know,” he begins, but Dean is already shaking his head.

“No, you don’t. No, you don’t, Cas. Just–“ Dean pauses, heaves a deep breath, forces himself to meet Cas’s eyes again, now crinkled with concern. He lets the calm they always bring wash over him like grace, like absolution. When he speaks, it comes out all in one breath. “Cas, you gotta know. You gotta know I love you, too. Castiel.” A desperate, fragile thing, all closely guarded hope tangled so closely in the warmth of his soul that it’s grown hard to tell them apart. Dean stands there on this bridge with the deepest, most precious part of his heart in his hands, and he stares into Cas’s wide eyes, and it feels like all of the times that they did this on Earth without words.

Cas finally rocks back on his heels, and Dean’s heart clenches at the genuine surprise written in his features. “You didn’t-“ 

Cas shakes his head. “No, Dean. No, I never thought...” Cas trails off, before he lifts his hand to hold Dean’s more firmly against his cheek. “I don’t deserve-“

Dean cuts him off immediately. “No. Cas. You think this is about deserving?” He’s never been good at telling Cas these things, but nothing has ever felt more important than this moment right now, Cas watching him like he’s afraid to hope. “Cas, you could do anything... Hell, you have done a lot of things.” A corner of Cas’s mouth quirks up at that. “But I would still love you. Cas, I still...” Dean doesn’t really realize that the reason everything has gone hazy around the edges is because of the tears until Cas steps forward, swipes them away with his thumbs, tells him, “Shh, Dean, I know, I know. It’s okay now.” 

Dean catches Cas’s hand instantly; it feels like something urgent is trapped in his chest, a living thing, raw and aching. “Cas, I would have done anything, _anything _, to get you back.” Cas gently twists his hand until he is gripping Dean’s wrist, brings Dean’s hand to rest against his own chest.__

____

____

“Dean, when I thought you were gone... I had no idea it could feel like that. That’s why... That’s why I let the Empty take me. Dean, my life was already yours, you had to have known.” Dean shakes his head, but Cas smiles. “To feel something like this... In all of the millennia I have lived, there is nothing like it.”

Cas tugs him by the wrist, and Dean goes willingly, drapes his arms around Cas’s shoulders and lets himself feel Cas’s breath ghosting against his cheek. When their lips finally touch, Dean starts shaking again, or maybe he never stopped, but Cas digs his fingers into the back of his shirt, grips him tight and holds him together, just like he has for all of the years they spent together on Earth. But now there is no rush, there is no demon clawing down the door, neither of them are bleeding out on the floor. It is a beautiful day, and the wind whispers through the trees, and when Dean pulls back from the kiss, he is met with Cas’s beautiful, blue eyes and something restless inside of him finally settles.

Several months later, they’re standing in front of the rundown car that someone had sold to Dean’s classic car shop this morning. It had been basically free, but that was to be expected since the thing was barely even a car anymore. “Cas, I mean, you could have any other car. Any other car. Does it really have to be this one?” 

Dean has to put up some token resistance, after all, or Bobby will start saying he’s gone soft, but it’s an effort doomed to failure from the start. Cas looks from the Continental to Dean pleadingly and Dean heaves out a sigh. He’s pretty sure he has never once, in this lifetime or the last, been able to turn Cas down when fixed with a look like that. “All right, all right. Easy with the eyes. It’s only ten am.” Cas lights up immediately, and Dean turns away so he doesn’t kiss him because he knows if he does now, he won’t be able to stop for a good long while, and Sam and Eileen are due any minute.

“Come on,” he tells Cas, reaching back to tangle their fingers. The physical part is still new to him, but the warmth in his chest has long been familiar. “I’ll start working on it tomorrow.”  


Cas tells him, “Thank you, Dean,” with all of his characteristic earnestness, and Dean huffs a sigh to hide his embarrassment. 

“You managed to get the Impala here. It’s only fair,” Cas muses as they round the corner of the shop and come out in front of the Roadhouse.  


Dean turns around at that, looks Cas dead in the eye and says, “What can I say, Cas. The Impala and I just share a more profound bond,” and then bounds up the stairs and through the door as Cas’s jaw drops in mock betrayal.

Sam is already sitting at the counter with Eileen, and Dean sneaks up behind him just to be a dick. Sam almost falls off the chair when Dean slams his hands down on his brother’s shoulders, and Eileen laughs as Sam immediately starts bitching. 

“You’re losing your touch, Sammy! If I didn’t know better, I would have never guessed you were a hunter,” Dean teases. Sam is still a sore loser even in the afterlife, because he immediately grouses back, “Yeah, says the man who got himself impaled like two weeks after the last crisis was averted.”

“Hey, man, too soon!” Dean complains, but Sam only rolls his eyes. 

“It’s been about two hundred years on Earth, Dean.”

Before they can really get into it, Dean feels the warmth of Cas’s hand at the small of his back, followed by the faint static of his presence. It’s barely even a touch, but it still sends shocks of electricity up Dean’s spine, so he lets himself lean back into Cas just a bit and tries to ignore the knowing look in Eileen’s eyes and the way Sam looks up like he’s asking Jack for strength.

That evening, after Sam and Eileen have waved goodbye and set off back to the little cottage they share up on the hill, Dean snags Cas’s elbow and leads him around the back of the garage to where the Impala is parked in its place of honor.

“Where are we going?” Cas asks, even as he pulls open the passenger side door and climbs in, a smile already in his eyes.

Dean shrugs. “Just for a drive.” He feels young and in love, and all of the years that he and Cas spent tip-toeing around each other on Earth feel a million miles away. 

They pull out of the garage as the sun is setting, and Cas laughs when Dean steps on the gas and the car surges beneath him. Dean watches out of the corner of his eye as Cas leans his head out the passenger window, and huffs a laugh when Cas glances back at him over his shoulder, his hair wind-mussed in the most unflattering way possible. As the streetlights of their little town, this piece of heaven that belongs to them, fly past overhead, the midnight-black paint of the Impala sparkles like it’s brand new.

As the car climbs into the foothills and the stars shine like silver fire above them, Cas reaches over and rests his hand on Dean’s thigh. It still makes Dean’s heart skip like he’s seventeen, but he wraps his fingers around Cas’s hand, focuses on the heat of his skin and the thrum of Baby beneath them and the feel of the wind whipping in through Cas’s open window and scouring away the leftover pain in his soul.

He drives until he feels the stars have spiraled far enough across the sky, and then lets the car drift to the side of the road, roll to a stop. Dean recognizes the river rushing along beside them, and he realizes that the bridge where they first met in this world must be only a few more turns ahead. When he twists to look at Cas, he finds Cas already studying him with his too-serious gaze, the glint of his blue eyes catching the starfire in a way that’s not quite human. 

“Cas,” Dean sighs, soft like a prayer, and Cas leans forward like he was just waiting for Dean to ask and meets him halfway. Cas kisses him deep and slow, cradles Dean’s jaw like there is nothing more precious in heaven or Earth or below the earth than him. Dean breaks the kiss long enough to rise up on his knees, swing one leg over to straddle Cas, and for all that they might be dead, this is still just as cramped as it was on Earth. Cas presses kisses to his jaw, scratches his fingers down Dean’s back, and Dean heaves out a breath, feels the years that he spent running and suffering and fighting falling away.

Eventually Dean loses his fight with the Impala’s front seat, and they scramble into the back like teenagers, and with just about as much finesse. Dean snorts when Cas slips and slams his head into the back window in the process, but before he can open his mouth, Cas gets him pinned down and the rest of his mirth drains away on a groan. 

Dean twines his fingers in Cas’s hair, tells him, “Cas, Cas, I love you,” in panting breaths because the dreams he still can’t always shake are the ones where Cas leaves him and he’s left on Earth thinking, _He didn’t know, I never told him, he had no idea that he just took what’s left of this hunter’s heart with him, but if I’d told him right then he never would have known peace. ___

____

____

Cas breathes the words back into Dean’s mouth with adoration, the same way he breathed life back into his lungs when he first pulled him from perdition all those years ago. Cas’s grace isn’t all that it used to be, but Dean still feels it run like icy fire through his veins, treading the line between pleasure and pain so finely that Dean has to turn his head and bury his teeth in the juncture of Cas’s shoulder and neck, whine through it. 

Cas leans forward, rumbles into his ear, “Dean Winchester, I love you,” fierce and protective, and Dean feels the way it burns through every part of his body, sees it sparking in Cas’s eyes, the way this celestial being looks at him with a mixture of wonder and awed helplessness. Dean digs his fingers into Cas’s upper back, right where his wings would be and revels in the way Cas arches beneath them like a live wire, cries his name like something beloved.

They end up falling asleep in the backseat of the Impala because they can, and Dean won’t be sore with it for a week afterwards like he would if they were still on Earth. When he blinks his eyes open in the morning, he cranes his head until he catches a glimpse of the Impala’s side mirror, reflecting the purples and pinks and golds of the dawn bleeding together like watercolors in the distance. Beside him, Cas’s hair is haloed in a fine outline of gold, and Dean has to catch his breath at the sheer rush of affection he feels just watching Cas curled beside him, the gentle rise and fall of his side. 

He’s planning to wake Cas up gently, he swears, but when he goes to twist in Cas’s arms, he promptly dumps himself on the floor between the front and back seats, and it takes a good amount of writhing and some creative swearing to get free. Cas is awake and laughing by the time Dean wriggles free, so Dean kneels on the floor and presses a kiss to Cas’s lips to hush him, even if he’s laughing a bit himself. When he pulls back, Cas has managed to pull himself together enough that only one corner of his mouth is quirking up. Dean rolls his eyes good-naturedly, tells him, “Come on, Cas, let’s go home. I recall something about a Continental that needs some fixing up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Finally jingled my way over here... Come say hi on Tumblr where I'm making memes to cope @sapphistical
> 
> (Did I write this fic to the dramatic rendition of Carry on Wayward Son from the finale? Definitely not.)


End file.
